


A Rusted Bicycle

by curiousCanine



Series: Salted Roots [1]
Category: Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comic), Sonic the Hedgehog - All Media Types
Genre: Family Drama, Family Issues, Gen, Mild Language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-06
Updated: 2020-10-06
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:53:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26863192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/curiousCanine/pseuds/curiousCanine
Summary: A hick town like Knothole is far from the "shining beacon" that was the Mobotropolis he grew up in. So too is his goody-goody version's clanking old man.So why is he here?
Series: Salted Roots [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/653063
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	A Rusted Bicycle

“Can we have a heart-to-heart, son?”

Scourge found himself shaken to the core. Not because of the words, not because of the metal hand on his shoulder, not even because of the soft, almost tender expression in the robian’s glowing eyes. No, the strangest thing about the way his lungs were being cut up in his chest was how Jules _sounded_. How his dad- how _Sonic’s_ dad- lacks the self-importance Scourge was so familiar with. For a moment the world seemed to slide into a mirror-dimension where everything was the same, and yet all the more different for it. Then he remembered that this was already the case.

“Uh, sure?” The confusion peppered itself into his voice, subtle yet readable. Jules seemed to pick up on it, and yet he didn’t bother to comment. Scourge felt his brows furrowing. There’s no way he’d been found out- he and Sonic are one and the same, tip to toe- but the thought niggled at the back of his mind all the same. He followed Jules into the kitchen, watched the other pull out a chair and then sit in the one next to it like a house settling into its foundation. 

Light from the window spilled across the rough grain of the table, dripping off the edges into Jules’s lap. Scourge remembered to breathe and forced himself to plop down into the open chair, cool in its place beyond the windo’s reach. He leaned back as much as he could, butt hovering on the edge of the seat so he could slouch just that little extra inch.

Jules couldn’t actually smile, what with the whole metal face thing, but his eyes flickered more brightly as they stared. It was quiet. Uncomfortable in a way Scourge could not place. 

“So…” He broke the silence as quickly as he could. He hated how unnatural the words were as they filled the air. Sonic was probably way closer to his dad, there’s no way they’d just _sit_ here like this and do nothing. A lump of memory grew in his throat, but he swallowed it back down before it could make him croak. He pried a smile open on his cheeks. “What’s up, Pop-corn kettle?”

No, that was ridiculous even by Sonic’s standards. The cringe rolled down his spine when it couldn’t exit off his lips, and Scourge can feel the way it makes his fur crawl. Even Jules noticed that. Scourge primed himself for a meaningless roundabout, an _‘I’m fine’_ forming behind his teeth already before Jules threw him off. 

“It’s okay. You don’t have to pretend.”

Scourge couldn’t breathe. Every strand of fur on his body stood on end, quills straining against the worn wooden back of his chair. He spluttered. Bluffed, “What are you talking about?” The laugh that follows it was almost wheezy.

Jules looked at him, and Scourge couldn’t even think of moving anymore. This must be it, isn’t it? No more wearing his goody-two-shoes’s shoes for kicks and giggles. His toothy smile rusted into a tight grimace. His dad had been a pushover, but this guy was backed with some solid steel shins and as tough as Scourge is he didn’t think he was quite ready to fight his dad’s face again-

“I know you probably think of your mother and I as strangers. To be honest, I don’t really blame you.”

Scourge only half-listened to the words as he formulated an escape plan in his head, but his gut picked up on the oddity of Jules calling Bernadette his mother when _obviously_ the jig was up.

“You were so young when the war started… it must feel a little awkward, right?” Jules paused, and Scourge caught up to what the other has actually been saying. This isn’t a ‘gotcha’. This is something else.

“I, uh…” Scourge fumbled for a response, trying to look less like he was about to shit himself. He could say something neutral, right? He shrugged. “I guess.”

Jules’s shoulders drooped slightly, and he chuckled in a weary and tired way. Chaos, how weird it was to hear his own dad’s laugh with that static-y twinge underneath it. It’s like listening to him talk through a tin can. Scourge took the painful nostalgia of that packed box and folded it a little tighter in his hands. 

“No, no. I get it. It’s been over a decade since you saw either of us, and now all of a sudden we’re living together… like we don’t have any missing time between us at all. I feel like I hardly know you.”

Scourge decided to politely avoid commenting on how right that assumption was. “Not your fault,” he tried to shrug it off again, “I mean. You _did_ spend most of that time a wind-up tin soldier. Uh.” Shit, wait, he was still a robot. Was that insensitive? Could he play that off as a joke, or would Sonic already be past that kind of thing? He didn’t get to dwell on it.

“Son, you don’t have to pretend you’re alright about this. Chuck and I were talking, and, well.” Jules curled the fingers of his hand up where it laid on the table, gripping a sliver of shadow under his palm and inadvertently hiding it away from the dust-filled light still warming the wood. “He told me about how you never knew where we went. About the kind of person you’ve been growing into.”

The air felt heavier. “Pops…” Scourge said, “Listen, it’s cool-”

“It’s not.” There was a hard edge to Jule’s voice, white noise crackling up behind his words. “The last time I saw you, you were just a waddling hoglet who’d barely grown in their quills. You’re all grown up, now. And I missed it. Your first day of school, your first mission as a Freedom Fighter… I missed my chance at being there to support you.”

Scourge sat up straighter in his chair, eyes locked on the robian in front of him. Sonic’s dad is looking back at him, eyes intense with something Scourge had never seen before on that face. He sat there, wondering if this wasn’t some weird dream as two metal hands clasped onto his shoulders.

“You’re my son. You’ve accomplished so much, seen so many things… you’ve even changed your name. I’m so proud of you.” Scourge felt his heart skip a beat when the other’s voice broke. Dad looked at him, warmth in his eyes, a love that Scourge could physically feel pouring from those red, red eyes. A knot in his chest began to come undone. “I know this has been hard for you. But I want so badly to make things right… I know I’m a stranger, I know your mother and I hardly know who you’ve become- but we’re ready to learn.”

He could take this. He could run with it. Scourge worked his jaw, eyes stinging with the dust in the air as his hands clenched at his sides. 

“I want to get to know you, Sonic.”

“I…” Scourge felt the resolve crush in his chest. At once he remembered himself, remembered the -warm- cold steel on his shoulders, the artificial set of eyes wearing pupils that only made it _seem_ like he was being looked at. He stood up, forcing Jules’s hands off of him and back across the window’s pool of light. He took a step back.

Two.

“I gotta go.” The sound left his throat with a pathetic tightness. Like a coward, Scourge turned heel and hurried from the room, shoulders squared and spine straight as a rod while a horrible and sticky heat smeared across his face and his ears. He couldn’t see the rest of the house as he left it, but that’s alright. In this back-water hovel there wasn’t even any pavement on the roads, much less cars to turn him into a blue smear on the ground.


End file.
